


Nightmares

by Chrononautical



Series: Endless Apocrypha [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Lucifer isn't necessarily bad with kids, Post-Season/Series 01, Protective Lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 12:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9895976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrononautical/pseuds/Chrononautical
Summary: Trixie absolutely cannot go to sleep before she speaks to Lucifer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dream of the Endless takes his responsibilities seriously, but he has been known to grant boons and advice to the dreamers that enter his kingdom from time to time. I don't think he'd get along with television Lucifer any more than he gets along with the comic book version. Morpheus makes Amenadiel look like a happy go lucky rebel; I can't actually imagine a version of Morpheus and Lucifer that don't have bad blood. Still, I thought I'd borrow the King of the Dreaming for the sake of a little domestic fluff. I imagine Morpheus would throw up his hands at the less-than-dramatic prospect, while leaving it to us to do as we liked.

Lucifer knew that the Decker spawn was unnaturally interested in him, but he was still surprised when Chloe called and asked if he could swing by to see the thing at ten o’clock at night. Usually it was asleep by then. Perhaps that was the reason the detective sounded so desperate over the phone. Never let it be said that he hesitated a moment when Chloe truly needed him. 

Hustling a delightful husband and wife off to the rest of their anniversary celebration after only two rounds, which was truly rude, he threw on a clean suit and rushed to her aid. If he also broke a traffic law or three in his haste to reach her side, well. What the fine officers of the LAPD didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Besides, speeding was fun. At least Detective Decker was suitably grateful for the sacrifice of his evening. The moment Lucifer raised his hand to knock, the door was open and she was thanking him, practically on bended knee. 

“I really appreciate this, Lucifer. I know you’re not big on kids, but Trixie has been freaking out all day. Ever since the kidnapping she’s had these terrible nightmares, and I don’t know. This morning she somehow got the idea that seeing you might help, what with the whole devil thing. When I told her we weren’t going to wake you up at six a.m., she went crazy.”

Lucifer was grateful for the restraint and gave her his broadest smile. He’d been otherwise engaged at that hour with a lovely young man from Ethiopia who knew quite a bit about acupressure. Naturally he would have answered the detective’s request no matter what, but he appreciated her respect for his time. 

“It was good of you not to summon me the moment she asked, though you might have called upon me during the day. A word from you could never be an inconvenience, darling. Even if it is on behalf of your wretched little progeny.” 

“Yeah, well. She’s been demanding to see you, not asking. It’s insane. I didn’t realize the half of it when I left for work this morning. Apparently, she tried to leave school in the middle of the day. Dan got the call since he’s still on suspension, and he wasn’t going to bring her to see you. Didn’t bother to call me either. I guess he thought she needed discipline for trying to sneak out. Not, you know, our support.”

“Detective Douche was less than emotionally aware? What an astounding turn of events!”

Twisting her lovely lips the way she did when she refused to bow to Lucifer’s obvious wisdom, Chloe said, “That isn’t fair. Dan thinks Trixie needs stability right now, and she does. I just wish he’d called me. He basically kept her in time out all afternoon because she wouldn’t stop asking for you. Eventually he gave up and dropped her here, letting me know that the whole day had been a holy terror. That was an hour ago. Which just happens to be an hour after her usual bedtime. When she finally calmed down enough to explain her side of things, well. That's when I called you. Just. Thank you for coming.” 

“As you know, I am yours to command, detective.” Beatrice Decker was watching them from the doorway to her bedroom. Tear tracks stained her cheeks and her nose had obviously been leaking at some recent point as well, but her staring eyes were full of hope.

Chloe smiled, just that little quirk at the corner of her mouth that she tended to repress so Lucifer wouldn’t realize how fond she was of him. “Sure, when you listen.”

Much as he hated to disappoint, especially since the good detective so rarely asked him for anything even approaching a personal favor, Lucifer was habitually honest. “Unfortunately I can’t actually do anything about dreams. I’d like to help her, really I would, but they’re not exactly my purview.” 

Distinctly unimpressed, Chloe glared at him. “Obviously you can’t really fix Trixie’s nightmares. Just talk to her. Be nice.” She seemed tired. The red around her eyes of late certainly hadn’t been makeup. “Please.” 

“You know I think I might be insulted, detective. I’m always nice.” 

At least he could easily promise to do everything in his power to protect the child and her mother, if that was the source of Beatrice’s anxiety. Unfortunately, small though its brain might be, the detective’s spawn was probably capable of realizing that Lucifer’s best had only barely been enough the first time around. She might not realize that he’d been forced to beg for his father’s help, but she obviously knew that the Malcolm Graham situation had been a disaster. 

“Thank you.” Chloe’s smile was radiant with gratitude. Lucifer couldn’t help mirroring the expression, even as she gestured to the child. Immediately abandoning the pretence that it wasn’t listening to the conversation, it rushed to Lucifer, wrapping its little arms around the his waist in a particularly obstructive way. 

Patting its head uncertainly, Lucifer tried to hold on to his smile. “Hello, Beatrice. Rough day?” 

Showing good sense and a respect for couture, the child turned its filthy face away from his Armani jacket. “Mommy, can I talk to Lucifer alone? Please?” 

“Of course, monkey.” The look Chloe gave him was difficult to read. It seemed to be a mix of pleading and warning. “He can put you to bed and you can talk in your room.” 

“Okay,” the child whispered. 

For a long moment nothing happened. Then Chloe tilted her head meaningfully toward the child’s room. 

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Lifting the child, Lucifer carried it into its room. Chloe made an unhappy sound, but Lucifer suspected that her displeasure merely stemmed from the fact that he was holding it at arm’s length, not his course of action. The spawn didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she laughed for the first time since his arrival. 

“You’re so silly, Lucifer!” 

Grinning back at her, Lucifer felt his confidence return. Unpredictable by nature, children were difficult for him to deal with, but Beatrice Decker was her mother’s daughter. She wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “No sense letting you use one of my favorite suits as a handkerchief you filthy little cretin,” he agreed, depositing her on the small bed amid the tangle of linens and blankets. 

“Can you close the door, please? I don’t want Mommy to hear.” 

Obligingly, Lucifer pushed the flimsy barrier into place. He refrained from pointing out that the detective was a professional investigator and could almost certainly find a way to listen to everything that happened in this room if she so chose. Hopefully the overburdened mother would take the opportunity to enjoy a glass of wine while Lucifer dealt with her troubled offspring. 

When he turned back to the child, he saw her sitting up ramrod straight. Her serious expression might have been cute under other circumstances, if he’d had the appropriate human hormones. 

“Lucifer Morningstar, First of the Fallen, King of Hell, Prince of Darkness, Emperor of the Abandoned Realms, Protector of the Gates of Tartarus, Lord of Abbadon, Gaoler of Wicked Souls, General of the Damned, Warden of Apocalypse, Captain of the Lake of Fire,” and so she continued. Lucifer allowed her to continue. It had been centuries since he last allowed a full listing of his titles, but he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt. 

They had been given to him by the demons, of course. Eternity was long, and the soulless liked to pass the time by squabbling over status. He needed to have such offices, allowing them to order themselves accordingly, or so the logic went. Even Maze, the most sensible demon he knew, preened under the weight of her own dozen names as his trusty left hand. Still, it wasn’t likely that she’d taught the detective’s child the proper way to address him. Precious few humans ever heard most of those names, and Maze wouldn’t waste her time when she knew how annoying Lucifer found the whole rigamarole. 

Horrified, he listened as the child continued down the full litany. The girl who so often slurred his name to something closer to loose-fur did not make a single lisp when pronouncing Sheol and the old Hebraic names for the various denizens of hell. Every perfectly enunciated phrase struck him like a blow. Detective Decker would never forgive him for whatever had been done to her progeny to teach it such manners. He might not forgive himself. Demonic tutors were not often kind. 

Finally, after what felt like years but what Lucifer had timed out on multiple occasions as a solid fifteen minutes, she reached the denouement. “Morpheus, King of Dreams, sends his greetings and compliments.” 

Trixie seemed to lose her steam then. Relaxing her little shoulders, she grinned up at him, looking relieved. Lucifer was anything but. 

“And?” he demanded, keeping his voice to a low hiss because the detective would surely break the door open if he started shouting the way he wanted to.

“And what?” The tiny human looked confused. “I know it’s weird, but I had a dream that if I gave you a message I wouldn’t have nightmares anymore.”

“So what’s the message?” Growling low, he tried to remember that this was Morpheus’s doing, not the girl’s. It wasn’t easy when she persisted in her feigned innocence. 

“That was the message. All of that stuff about the fire lake and how you’re a king. Sorry. I just couldn’t go to sleep again until I said it to you. I know it was only a dream, but it felt real. Like, really real. Even more real than my other nightmares.” 

Lucifer took a deep breath. She was an ordinary human child. This was not her fault. She was a dreamer. All of them were. Forcing a smile, he tried the easy approach. “Yes, but there was more to it than that, wasn’t there Beatrice? Something else you want to tell me? Something else you dreamed of doing?” 

“Um. Not really.” She smiled. “Thanks for listening to me, Lucifer.” 

“Really? And I’m supposed to believe that! A sworn enemy sends a most cordial greeting through the mouth of one under my protection? Oh no. He sends something else. What is it?” Lucifer gripped the child, pinning her arms to her sides easily, but taking care not to injure the fragile creature. “Poison in my cup? Dream Sand in my eyes? Or something more sinister?” He searched her face for the truth. She looked back at him with mild alarm. “Will he strike at someone important to me from the one most important to her?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Beatrice’s small voice wobbled. “Lucifer, what’s wrong?” 

“Morpheus! Everything about that pretentious, glowering prat is wrong. Fear not, Beatrice Decker. Whatever threat he posed will not come to pass. He reminds me that I am a king. Very well. I shall remember it. He dares to challenge me? Oh he’ll learn. He’ll learn. I’ll teach that skinny wisp of a man what an army of the damned can do to those old bone gates in the Dreaming. Bone will never fail to bleach and crack before the furnaces of hell! Does he think a few nightmares can stand against the demonic hordes? Maze will take great pleasure tearing his pathetic Corinthian apart personally. I’ll see her devouring his eyeteeth as easily as she’d down a drink.” 

“Please.” Lucifer looked down to see Beatrice gripping his hand tightly in both of her small ones. He hadn’t noticed her touch. “Please don’t be mad at King Morpheus. He promised to help me.” 

Lucifer took a deep breath and sat down gingerly on the edge of her bed. “Well,” he forced a smile. “Perhaps you had better tell me the whole story, love. Don’t spare the details.” 

Beatrice blinked. “Promise not to tell my mom?”

“She will hear no word of yours from me.” 

“I have nightmares sometimes. You know, since the bad man took me from school.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Lucifer wondered if he’d given the child too much credit for intelligence. “She knows that. She mentioned them to me over a week ago, and practically every day since.”

Flushing crimson, the girl looked down at her hands. “Yeah, but she doesn't know what they're about. I know that she's a cop and it's her job to protect everybody. It's just that when I'm asleep, I have nightmares.”

“You blame her for what happened?” A less than logical conclusion, but not entirely surprising under the circumstances. 

“No.” Beatrice shut her eyes for a long moment. When they snapped open they were deep, ageless, and exhausted. “In my dream she dies. Every time the bad man kills her in really gross, bad ways. Like the kind of stuff they won’t even show on TV until after my bedtime. Sometimes you’re there and he kills you first, before he starts hurting Mommy.” 

“Ah. I see,” Lucifer said, because Chloe had once spent over half an hour lecturing him on the use of profanity when speaking with the small human. She’d been quite specific that the phrases he felt like using were entirely inappropriate. 

“Yeah,” Beatrice agreed, as if he’d used the terms that had truly occurred to him. “After that he chases me, and I know he’s going to hurt me too. Kill me. But I always wake up before he catches me.”

“You mean your mother wakes you up when she hears you screaming.” 

Charmingly, the child gave him the same blank, unimpressed look her mother so often used. Were the situation less dire, Lucifer might have been tempted to photograph the expression. Then again, time on Earth was short. Subtly slipping his phone from his pocket, he captured the tilt of the child’s head just before she added an eye roll at his antics. 

“Yes. That’s what I mean. It’s a bad dream, Lucifer.” 

Obviously she felt he wasn’t taking her seriously. Her mother was the same way when he tried to break the tension of a moment. 

“So what changed?”

“Last night when I was running away, I tripped and I fell through a wall. It was like my whole dream changed. There was a pumpkin man talking with a crow about—something.”

“Of course.” 

The child wasn’t much of a storyteller, but Lucifer was able to follow her tale easily enough. The crow, clearly one of the Ravens of Dream, advised her to seek his master if she would be free of her nightmares. When she asked for further guidance, the Jack-of-Trades pointed her toward a path. All she had to do was follow the yellow brick road, just like Dorothy. 

Roads in the Dreaming were never straightforward. Yellow brick soon turned to alternating yellow tiles as she had to dance her way through the dream of someone’s anxious high school prom. Then the dance floor was a light up European discoteque, but she only stepped on the yellow panels and eventually she made her way out into a garden. Skipping from one dandelion to the next, bouncing along the champagne glasses of giants, and racing across the yellow stripe of a rainbow, Beatrice Decker followed her path. Very few had the intelligence or the will to follow such a trail. It was a feat worthy of respect. 

And of course, all roads in the Dreaming lead to the castle. 

Here, he had to interrupt again. “A hippogriff, a wyvern, and a gryphon, not a pegasus, a dragon, and a bird-lion.” 

Beatrice glared at him. “I’ve seen Harry Potter. I know what a hippogriff looks like, and it’s not that.” 

“Oh, right. You’re the expert. My mistake. What would I know about it? I’ve only lived a few thousand years among the creatures your kind calls mythic.” 

“Lucifer, it was my dream!” 

“Fine. Please continue. They wouldn’t admit you as the future President of Mars, given that waking titles hold no importance in the Dreaming. How then did you pass the gate?”

Smiling mischievously, Beatrice said, “I told them Mervyn sent me. It wasn’t a lie. I mean, he told me how to get there.” 

“So they presumed you had some menial task to perform. Very clever, little one!” 

“Just a little Trixie.” She grinned in the same insipid way Lucifer had seen her father do when he tickled the child or teased her for lying. 

“How then, did you gain audience with my old enemy Morpheus?”

“He wasn’t tricked. When I found the throne room, he was sitting there waiting for me.” 

Lucifer could picture the scene easily enough. Light streaming in a thousand colors from the high mosaics of dream glass, the field of stars in place of a ceiling, and Morpheus perched on that impossible throne, wholly unsupported by the long stair trailing up to it. A mortal could be forgiven for being impressed. 

Trixie shook herself like a bewildered animal. “He didn’t want to make a deal with me. When I said that you made deals all the time he didn’t like it. Something happened, and a big, weird, red guy with bat wings and a pitchfork appeared. Maybe it was another nightmare. I don’t know, but I thought it was kind of funny. It didn’t look anything like you. Anyway, it went away when I laughed. Then King Morpheus showed me a picture of you, like an old timey portrait with paints and things. Like in the museum. It was really funny. You had wings.”

“And when you confirmed that you were known to me, albeit in my slimmed down, wingless state?” 

“He said if I did a service for him he would give me a, a something.” 

“A boon?”

“Yeah! It’s like a wish. I wanted to never have nightmares again, but he said that wouldn’t be a good thing. People shouldn’t have only the dreams they want to have. I guess it’s like eating your vegetables or something. Instead, I’ll just never have that nightmare about Detective Malcolm killing my mom ever again, and sometimes if I want to I can dream about Mars.” 

“And the service?”

“To give you the message. It was really, really long, but he said I’d remember it and I think I did.” 

“I think you did as well.” 

So Morpheus wanted peace. Lucifer laughed. Insulting the Devil in front of his host hadn’t been the wisest choice the Dream Lord ever made, but perhaps Lucifer’s vow of vengeance had been premature. Stick up his ass or not, Morpheus had shown kindness to someone under Lucifer’s protection when he would have been well within his rights to punish. 

“Was it wrong?” Trixie’s tired brow wrinkled in concern. 

“Of course not darling. I’d start a war to protect you. Turns out, stopping one is just as easy. If you happen to see the Dream Lord again, you can give him a message from me.” 

“What’ll you give me?” the little minx asked craftily. 

“Fifty bucks?” 

“Deal!” 

Peeling the appropriate bill from his fold, Lucifer paid the young lady. Once she stashed the money carefully in her nightstand, she turned back to him, alert. 

“Peace.” 

“That’s it? Just one word?” 

“I suppose you might give him your own gratitude. And you’re welcome to go listing titles or paying homage if you like, love. I believe his inexhaustible litany includes such gems as Lord Shaper, Prince of Stories, Monarch of the Sleeping Marches, and King of the Riddle Realms. Feel free to make up a few more. The fellow loves his names. Practically demonic about it, he is.”

Trixie laughed. She was so small. Just a human, and barely that. Yet her dream quest was enough to change the course of an immortal’s relationship with one of the Endless. Lucifer would have destroyed Dream eventually, if only because he’d once been publicly embarrassed by the man. Trixie was worth putting aside those bad feelings for, though. Trixie was worth a great deal more than that. 

“Now, it’s half past eleven and headed for midnight. I expect your mother would like it if you went to sleep at long last.” 

“Goodnight, Lucifer!” Wrapping her skinny little arms around his neck, Trixie pressed a firm kiss to his cheek. It was really quite endearing. Especially when she curled into her pillow and fell asleep immediately. Lucifer could almost understand the appeal she held for her mother. 

Slipping out of the room, he crept down the hall to find Chloe. Elbows on the kitchen counter, she seemed to be holding her head up with her hands instead of her neck. There was no alcohol in sight, and she stared at a spread of files and reports with wide, unseeing eyes. After a long moment, she glanced up to see him watching. Instantly collecting herself, she dropped her shoulders back and her posture settled into the usual ready for anything poise. 

“Does she want me to come in and say goodnight?” 

“Trixie’s already asleep, darling. It’s well past her bedtime.” 

The expression of beatific relief that relaxed Chloe’s beautiful features was one Lucifer had seen directed at him before, but usually only when he used his infernal abilities to save a human life or stop a criminal. Even then it only appeared when she’d been truly frightened first. Rather flattering to his pride, that look was. Pride must have been the feeling swelling his chest and spreading a grin across his face. Perhaps it felt so much deeper than his usual vanity because Chloe made him earn it. Perhaps it was only her strange nature that affected him this way. 

Squeezing his arm gently as she passed him, Chloe padded silently to her daughter’s doorway, peeking in at the already dreaming child. Following, Lucifer watched her lean against the wooden frame, wiping a hand across her own exhausted eyes, though there were no tears in evidence. She looked small. Human. Instinctively, he returned the gesture before he could stop himself, placing a gentle hand on her back. 

Braced for rejection, Lucifer was completely unprepared when she turned to him, leaning into his chest, wrapping an arm around his waist and allowing him to hold her for a long moment. If Lucifer were on better terms with his father, he might have called it a miracle. Feeling her warm body pressed against him, her soft hair on his cheek, the appalling poly-cotton blend of her cheap work shirt under his hands, Lucifer was tempted. A saint would have been, and he was only a devil. 

Before he could say something regrettable, Chloe put a hand on his lapel. A prelude to a kiss if ever there was one. Looking up into his eyes, she smiled. “Thank you,” she said again. 

“Anything you desire,” he replied breathlessly. “Always.” 

Mischief sparked in those blue eyes, just as it had in her daughter’s brown ones. “You talk a good game, Lucifer Morningstar, but you really are great with kids.” 

Warily, he agreed. If Chloe had a high opinion of him, he wasn’t going to risk the moment by arguing. “They are humans, even if they happen to be small ones. Humans are predisposed to finding me attractive. Unfortunately, I find the enthusiasm of children to be less intriguing than the manner in which most adults express that attraction.” 

Nodding earnestly, Chloe asked, “So have you ever thought about it? Having some of your own?” 

“What?” Releasing her at once, Lucifer straightened his tie. That was an exit cue if ever he’d heard one, not that he was biologically compatible with a human. At least he probably wasn’t, but it was hardly a romantic topic. How disappointing that the detective should mention it at such an inopportune moment. 

“Keep your voice down,” Chloe chortled, muffling her own huffing laughter with both hands. 

“Oh, very funny, detective. I’m glad I amuse you.” Torn between annoyance and hurt pride at yet another rejection, Lucifer decided to show himself the door. 

Chloe didn’t even have the common decency to stop giggling as she accompanied him, though she was clearly making an effort to stifle them in deference to her daughter’s need for sleep. “Seriously, Lucifer, you don’t think fatherhood would fit in with your lifestyle?” 

She sounded so happy. Better than she’d been in weeks. Once again, Lucifer was overcome by that warm, spreading emotion in his chest. Pride, obviously, that he’d managed to improve her mood so substantially. 

“Don’t even joke, love,” he said, giving her a dramatic shudder. “Now that would be a nightmare.”


End file.
